Archive
If MS-Exchange room mailbox does not auto-decline, but forwards conflicting requests
Firefox Java AddOn settings on learning lab PCs
- FireFox should not be allowed to update automatically:
- Java within Firefox
- should not be allowed to update automatically
- especially not for Java (7.51 breaks our online textbook components)
- but it has not updated to 7.51
- is this b/o the Deployment Toolkit also being deactivated? Not sure: “By blocking the Java DT plug-in, the Java version detection mechanism is disabled. Therefore, when a user tries to launch a Java applet or application, that requires a specific Java version other than the active Java version on a user’s system, it will fail.”
- should not be set to “ask” every time (on frozen computers), plus: users miss the notification that asks them to enable it
- should not be allowed to update automatically
Call it “blog”, “CMS” or whatever, as long as your WordPress site visitor stats show that it helped people
I have been asked by a colleague about the “hits” in the upper right on my website. They are the number of visits I had(not counting myself, at least not when I am logged in – like many “bloggers”, I am likely my own best audience!
).
My website could be called “a blog”, since it is based on WordPress, which started as a platform for blogging (but now – being so easy and flexible, and free (though not to host)- is behind every 5th website on the planet!).
WordPress is also the platform for the faculty blogs in CLAS-pages: If you are member of CLAS and not represented up there, I hope you know that you can request getting a CLAS-page here.
“Blog stats” is a hard-coded label that I cannot change. If I could, I’d prefer to call it “Content Management System stats” (that’s probably why they do not allow for changes
).
As opposed to just “web-logging” what is going on in my daily work life, I try to organize in this CMS the little things that I discover, hoping for reuse:
- by other people. That’s at least my justification for blathering, and I am sticking to it. (1125 posts? Really? Plus plus 1? Oh well…
). - by myself. For the CMS and blogging habit (summarizing into a somewhat presentable, comprehensible form, and tagging for findability) makes me often search for answers that I have forgotten on my blog rather than on my computer (and that is despite me loving OneNote).
In my WordPress site (hosted on wordpress.com), I can see site visitor statistics like in the picture below: Includes search terms which led to clicks on one of my posts, countries of origin, outgoing links clicked etc.
I don’t do SEO or anything similar advanced on this website, nor do I use the statistics to cater to my audience (I am sure it is almost entirely transient). For me, it is just fun how I can glean from these statistics that I could help people find answers to their language, learning (and too often: computer infrastructure) questions and some of my work can be reused.
Heck, I decided to “blog” this email response, since it might answer the questions of a few more of colleagues than the person that emailed me.
Exploring the active directory
Run mmsys.cpl if you get no audible output in a Blackboard IM call on your PC
- Problem: Blackboard IM (4.5.3), in its call window , gives you audio output volume meters
, but no actual audio output. - Reason: Blackboard IM seems to have its on in-built idea which device to output audio to, even if you have no actual speakers plugged in to hear, and it is rather difficult to dissuade.
- Solution:
- Start / Run /”mmsys.cpl”, “OK”: Do the volume meters in there indicate that Blackboard IM outputs to another but your expected speaker (even if the other device is not the default)?


- Right-click on the other speaker device and Disable it.
- Also make sure to restart Blackboard IM. The built-in startup / dial tones will tell you immediately whether audio output works now
Internet Explorer add-ons to disable
- Problem: we need Realplayer for some legacy media, but Realdownloader is an unwanted feature.
- Workaround
How to test Voice boards (Blackboard Collaborate, formerly Wimba voice) for Vista Higher Learning (Supersite3) Textbooks
- First I create a voice board,



- and add an audio contribution so that students can respond:

- Fail:



- More fail


- The help offered is of no use: “If the Applet displayed the message “Audio Unavailable”, click here. “ This is neither the error message, nor does the help address Java (but rather audio hardware config) issues
- But if you refresh (F5 suffices) the window with the Setup Wizard, it starts working?

- Even the audio recorder:

- And the voice board (after F5):



- What Java version is this under ?
- Now a user needs to test from the student view




